Lisa Palmer, president and CEO of Regency Centers since 2020, has always been competitive, from the University of Virginia softball team, where she became the first softball player in the school’s history to have her jersey retired, to The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and beyond. Palmer admitted with a smile: “I hate to lose.”

Palmer expects that same drive from her employees. “If I could find a test that could measure innate competitiveness, I’d use it [in a heartbeat],” she laughed. However, to Palmer — who has led Regency Centers to improved efficiency, innovation and profitability — competitiveness does not equate to ruthlessness. It signifies striving for excellence every single day.

“Lisa wants Regency to be the leader of the pack, not just because our stock price is better but because we’re doing things differently,” said senior vice president of human resources Amy D’Olimpio. “She’s really focused on innovation. I don’t mean that just in terms of AI or technology. She drives us [as employees] to be smarter, more efficient and more strategic in how we do things.” This philosophy is not new at Regency. Former CEO Hap Stein was the same way, D’Olimpio added. “His mantra was: ‘Good is better. Better is best.’ Lisa has taken that and continued to move it forward.”

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Palmer draws many of her life lessons from her time as a competitive softball player. “I was a pitcher, and pitchers specifically are looked to as leaders in softball,” she explained. “You’re in the center of the field, and your demeanor impacts everyone on the team.”

She continued: “Even though you won’t win every game, you need to go into every game with a competitive mindset.” And that’s how she still approaches every day. Growing up in a suburb of Philadelphia, Palmer’s parents emphasized excellence and consistency. Fran, her mother, was always her biggest cheerleader and attended every one of her UVA weekend games, driving as far as Florida for away matches. Her father, Jon, who worked in banking, encouraged Lisa to focus on her studies. “He was my guidance counselor,” she recalled. “He’s the one that kept pushing me toward academics.”

While real estate is associated with fierce competition and high stakes, the field wasn’t originally on Palmer’s radar. “When I was little, I wanted to be a veterinarian because I love animals. Then I realized I can’t stand the sight of blood,” she laughed. But she always excelled at math and was drawn to business, so she decided to major in economics at UVA. “I wanted to pursue an MBA, which is why I did liberal arts as an undergrad,” she explained. “I wanted a more well-rounded educational experience.”

Palmer graduated from UVA in 1989 and worked at GE as a financial analyst for three years. In 1992, she turned her sights to business school. “I only looked at the top 10 schools,” she said. Except for one. “The reason I didn’t apply — and I don’t know if it’s still true today — was because at the time, it had a reputation for being cutthroat and competitive against your classmates,” she recalled. “Wharton, on the other hand, was known for being competitive with, not against, your classmates.”

During her time at Wharton, from which she graduated in 1994, classmates worked in teams, and that collaborative style suited her well. “When I think about how competitive I’ve always been at work, I’ve never felt like I was competing against the people I worked with,” Palmer explained. Instead, “I’m thinking about how I could contribute to positioning Regency to be the best, and that’s still how I think about it.”

At Wharton, Palmer specialized in operations and management with a focus on health care. She did a summer internship with Deloitte in Boston and later worked as a consultant at Accenture in Atlanta. “They promised me that I’d get a health care project. Then my first project was with Mobil oil,” she laughed. Accenture then sent her to San Francisco for a consulting project for Kaiser Permanente. Though she was finally working on health care, Palmer still wasn’t happy. “It’s easier to articulate now than it was when I was 26 years old,” she said. “With consulting, I never felt like I had the cohesion of a team. It was much more individual. You also didn’t get to see the results of your work. You deliver your recommendations, then you leave and you don’t implement it. So I did not get as much job satisfaction.”

Palmer realized that her happiness stemmed from “people, the team environment and the culture of the company,” she said.

Her parents had moved to Jacksonville, Florida, and she told them she’d like to move there, as well. Her father connected her with Albert Ernest, president of Jacksonville-based Barnett Banks and a fellow UVA alum. Ernest connected her to several companies. She received offers from both CSX and Regency Centers and chose Regency, “not because real estate sounded that exciting to me but because shopping centers did.” And honestly, she laughed, “it was shopping centers or trains.”

It was 1996, and Palmer started as senior manager of investment services, quickly rising to vice president of capital markets and later senior vice president of capital markets. She was open about her ambitions at the company. Palmer often traveled to investor relations meetings with Mary Lou Fiala, then president and COO. On a flight back from one such meeting in Minneapolis, Fiala asked Palmer about her goals. “I assume you want to be CFO,” she said.

Without skipping a beat, Palmer responded: “I would like to be CFO if that’s the step to have your job and Hap’s job because ultimately, that’s what I want.” Fiala, Palmer recalled, “nodded her head, smiled and went back and told Hap.” She took Palmer under her wing, helping her become a more empathetic and present leader. “She was so smart, so hardworking and so good at what she did,” recalled Fiala, “but one of the things she didn’t recognize was that she could be a little judgmental of people. Because she was so smart, she didn’t understand why everybody didn’t know what she knew.” Fiala added: “I helped soften her a bit.”

Palmer remembers Fiala’s style a little differently: “Hap always liked to say that one of Mary Lou’s talents is she could take you out to the woodshed, whip you and as you’re leaving, you’d say: ‘Thank you,’” she laughed.

A Leader Who Listens

These lessons from Fiala stuck as Palmer ascended — to president and CFO in 2016 and then to president and CEO in January 2020 at the age of 51. During Palmer’s very first quarter as CEO of a publicly traded company, she faced down COVID. “How she thrived in such a chaotic, really difficult environment during the pandemic as a brand-new CEO is beyond me,” said D’Olimpio.

Part of Palmer’s strength was her steadiness, something she learned from her pitching years. During the early months of the pandemic, she wrote a daily message, whether two sentences or three paragraphs, to Regency’s employees. Sometimes these notes were personal; other times, they focused on work. Messages like “We’re all having a hard time” or “We appreciate you. Thank you for everything you’re doing” helped build a sense of connection, according to D’Olimpio. “It was constant communication with employees, almost to a fault.”

That steadiness paid off. Throughout the pandemic, all of Regency Centers’ more than 400 properties remained operational, and 97% of tenants were open by the end of October, according to the company’s third-quarter-2020 report.

In February, Moody’s raised Regency Centers’ credit rating to A3 with a stable outlook, noting the company’s “consistently strong operating performance, high-quality and diversified portfolio of grocery-anchored shopping centers, prudent capital strategy and good liquidity profile.”

Palmer attributed much of Regency’s success to its trusting culture. She herself calls every employee on their birthday. “It’s never about work, it’s just five minutes to ask about their plans or joke about why they answered the phone on PTO,” D’Olimpio said. Initially, “some people were scared, thinking: ‘Why is the CEO calling me?’ Now, people look forward to it.” Palmer often picks up personal details during these calls. “She’ll say: ‘Did you know so-and-so is from my hometown or has the same dog as me?’” D’Olimpio shared.

The company has grown significantly, from 30 employees when she started to about 500 today and from 35 properties to more than 400. The best companies, Palmer believes, are never complacent. “She would be really proud if, at the end of her tenure, we were known as an organization that was agile and nimble, that continued to evolve and didn’t just do things the way we always did them,” D’Olimpio said.

That involves having the best team and the best environment. That’s why, when asked about her proudest achievement, Palmer cited her impact at UVA, where she and her mother endowed a softball scholarship in 2014 and a new softball stadium in 2020 in the Palmer name.

This commitment to nurturing talent is reflected in the new Lisa Palmer Fellowship, designed to provide mentorship and support to midcareer females in the Marketplaces Industry. “If you look at the number of women in C-suites and REITs, it’s still very limited,” Palmer noted. “While a lot of progress has been made, I don’t believe we, Regency included, have provided the tools and flexibility needed to pull women along.” Palmer herself will be a mentor within the fellowship program. “It’s what I love to do,” she said.